Ambuscade
by Markle
Summary: One of Pete's friends is missing . . . and dangerous.
1. Chapter 1

Tyler sat illuminated by the glow of his monitor. The blue light that washed his face offset the red hue still present from his morning jog. Wiping the sting from his eyes as sweat continued to slide around his eyebrows, Tyler started scrolling through his personal e-mail.  
  
His words were barely audible to himself as he muttered the subject lines that he bypassed. "'Fixed rate APR'. 'College diploma'. 'Attract men with larger breasts'. Why would anybody want a man with large breasts?" His eyes kept scrolling down the screen until he noticed they were resting on the name of an e-mail's author. "Sandra Wells," he whispered to himself. He let the mouse hover over the e-mail for just a moment, then abruptly pushed himself away from his desk.  
  
"I'm not dealing with her," he said to the hallway as he walked towards it. "Not this early."  
  
As Tyler pulled his t-shirt over his head and stepped into the bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror. He silently shook his head and turned to start the shower, letting the hot water steam up the room. He normally felt invigorated after jogging. He normally enjoyed pretending he looked healthier when he stared in the mirror. He normally took cool showers in the morning to clean away his sweat and exhaustion. Just reading her name, though, had thrown off his morning. Sandra Wells was still knocking him off balance. Half a year's distance hadn't gotten him anywhere.  
  
* * *  
  
A bright, cold light illuminated the Christmas Eve morning. Even with the heater on, they could feel the outside nip invading the truck as it sped along highway 166. It was nothing compared to the shivering pit in Tyler's stomach. Beside him, his brother's tightening grip on the steering wheel and creased forehead broadcasted he was growing more and more uptight, and Tyler couldn't help but feel guilty.  
  
He had been hoping Ben wouldn't rip into him again; he just hated the feeling of getting a lecture from his younger brother. He hated it more when it was deserved. The moment Ben opened his mouth, however, Tyler silently relaxed the jaw muscles he didn't know he'd been tensing. At least the stale, glass tension in the truck had finally shattered.  
  
"So let me get this straight," Ben started slowly, as though this weren't the third time he'd brought it up. "This 'Sandy' lives in Lowell, right?"  
  
Tyler's new comfort had been much shorter lived than he'd have liked. He dropped his gaze to his own shirt, idly tracing the patterns in its wrinkles with his eyes. He almost thought he saw Ben smirk over at him without turning his head, but he continued to stare at his own shirt. His voice caught in his throat, and it took him a few moments before it managed to sputter its way through. "She told me Lowell last night, before I asked you to take me. I didn't find out until this morning that she meant Lowell City."  
  
The chuckle that came from beside him had real warmth to it, but Tyler couldn't let himself feel it. Ben's voice held just as much warmth when he cynically asked, "And, this being Kansas, such a lovingly logical state, that would be the county seat of Lowell County?"  
  
Tyler's cheeks began to warm on their own, now, but not from the heater or his brother's stupid damned humor. He was beginning to get a little pissed. "No, Ben. Lowell City isn't even in Lowell County. It isn't anywhere near Lowell County. It's in Cherokee County and you already know that!"  
  
"Ha!" burst Ben. There wasn't even a hint of scorn in the laugh. Seventy minutes into this little trip, and he actually seemed to be enjoying the situation. "I know this state, 'mano. Lowell isn't even a city. I don't think you could even call it a town. There's nothing out there but road signs that point you back to Baxter Springs."  
  
What the heck did "mano" mean, anyway? Ben had started using that word as soon as he got back from Venezuela, but it was stupid. He'd looked it up in a Spanish dictionary, and it meant "hand". What sense did that make? Tyler looked over at Ben to ask this question but was cut off by Ben gesturing down the road.  
  
"That, 'mano," Ben began. There he goes with that stupid word, again. "That's Lowell."  
  
Tyler forgot all about silly foreign words as he looked at what was going to be his home for the next little while. There was a tall church, pristinely white in the middle of his gaze. A flat patch of snow, unable to hide all the grassy greens beneath it, stretched away from the church, interrupted occasionally by a smooth granite tombstone poking a hole up through its blanket. Beyond that, he thought he saw a gas station. Then there were homes. Houses and barns and fields and nothing.  
  
"There's nothing here!" he exclaimed to his younger brother.  
  
Ben chuckled, again with real humor. "That's what I've been trying to tell you." He pulled off the highway, and parked the truck on the side of the road. "Come on. At least it'll be easy to find Sandy."  
  
"Sandra," Tyler corrected as he numbly stumbled out of the truck. "There's nothing here!"  
  
"I remember someone telling me that before. You're from Smallville, idiot. There's nothing there either."  
  
Tyler grumbled inwardly, but protesting wouldn't get him anywhere. Ben had left home at 17, and came back years later after living in San Diego, Salt Lake City, Dallas, and Caracas. And yet despite Tyler's two-year head start, despite having all that extra time in their hometown, Ben was even more at home now than Tyler ever was in Smallville. If he told Tyler that there was nothing in Smallville, Tyler had no choice but to believe his little brother.  
  
"'Mano?" Ben asked lightly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Sandra. She's your girlfriend. You've been seeing her off and on for almost a year now. You're even at the moving-in stage." His sentences always had that edge of a laugh in them.  
  
"And." When he had a point, why wouldn't he ever just come to it without getting you to fish for it?  
  
He laughed to himself for few moments, and then asked, "So why don't you know where she lives?"  
  
Before he could even glance at the sheet of paper with Sandra's address on it, the knot in his stomach started to return. He hadn't noticed it leaving, but now it seemed determined to reach full-blown panic status.  
  
He reached out for Ben's shoulder to steady him, and took several deep breaths. "I don't know if I can do this, Ben," he almost whimpered. Why were his knees so weak? "Give me a minute to." he didn't catch himself trailing off. He didn't notice his brother's worried look, or slowly being lowered to the ground. Just those dark green dots that kept crowding his vision.  
  
  
  
The sound of gravel being ground beneath mud beneath snow beneath boots gradually called Tyler back from unconsciousness. The steady rhythm of footsteps was joined by quicker, lighter steps as they grew louder, nearer. Against his better judgment, he opened his eyes. As the light reached his pupils, the tangy discomfort in his stomach started to rise again. He hoped he could keep it under control, this time.  
  
"So I've met Ben," came the steady voice of Sandra from several yards away, still approaching. He turned his head to see her, and was rewarded by her smiling face and a hastened step in her walk. He breathed in the sight of her, her dark curly hair, her too-puffy cheeks, and her delicate, short form. Ben practically dwarfed her, walking ahead of her without waiting or offering her an arm in the snow. Jerk. He was nearly an entire foot taller than she, and much darker in coloring. She probably wasn't much less muscled than Ben, though. That was the one area where Tyler knew he had his brother beat. Literally, as they'd shown in the past.  
  
He pulled himself to his knees, and found that Ben had put him in the truck's flatbed with several blankets. It wasn't enough, and his teeth chattered through his smile.  
  
"I-i-ignore h-him, come here and warm me up, doll," he managed to force out his mouth. He didn't miss his brother's exaggerated eye-roll, but he was sure he wasn't supposed to.  
  
"Hello! Remember me?" contributed Ben. "I'm the guy who got help? This spectacularly cute help?"  
  
Tyler's grin broke wider as Sandra ran past Ben, and he all but forgot his nervous stomach. He forgot it, that is, until she stopped a dozen feet from the truck with a horrified look on her face.  
  
"What happened to you?" shrieked his girlfriend's stricken face. "Tyler, what happened?"  
  
Confusion blew through Tyler like a tornado. The panic in his stomach was rising to a maddening level, making him want to throw up, run away, scream, or all three. He could see Ben's perpetual cynical grin end in wide eyed shock as he broke into a run to replace Sandra's. His brother practically leaped over Sandra in his haste to get to the truck, grasping Tyler by the shoulders and forcing his back down to the bed of the truck again.  
  
"It'll be okay, Ty, it'll be okay!" Ben was shouting in his face. He was ripping one of the blankets to shreds, his hands moving incredibly quickly.  
  
What was going on? The panic was threatening to overcome him, he was scared and he didn't even know why. He didn't know what was wrong, he was confused, and...  
  
"AAAAUUGH!" The scream was ripped involuntarily from his throat. Ben had just touched one of those strips to his face, yet it felt as though he'd dug a flaming sword through his skull. His body jerked suddenly to the side, and the strip came away from his face. All he could see was green; green slime, green liquid, green something dripping off of it before Ben reapplied his make-shift bandage, this time with force.  
  
"NOO!" he screamed again, this time with even more voice and heavier convulsions. He could hear his screaming echoed by Sandra as she wailed from behind Ben. Lightning struck his head every time something came near his face. He was chewing on molten lava while spades dug through his face. His body thrashed, but Ben held steady, trying in vain effort to wrap even one strip around his head.  
  
In desperation, he took a swing at Ben, just to get him to stop, just to get it to end. He knew he struck something, but he didn't know what. All he knew for sure is that it had worked. Ben wasn't trying to strap anything to him, anymore. In fact, Ben seemed barely able to roll himself out of the truck and stand on his own feet.  
  
For all of two seconds, Tyler was free from the pain, and could think. There was screaming, there was shouting, there was pain, and there was green. Oil? What did it add up to? Why was Ben digging that pipe out of the truck? Why was he swinging it? The last thought that Tyler had before another flash of pain and the dark green spots enveloped him was, "But Ben's left-handed."  
  
  
  
ER. That's what those beeps reminded him of. He tried to shift in his bed as he realized he must have left the TV on.  
  
There was some rustling next to his bed. "'Mano, you awake?" It was Ben's voice. He sounded the same way he used to when they'd just broken something of their parents' and didn't want to overexcite anybody.  
  
Bright light pierced Tyler's eyes as he opened them, and he found he couldn't move his hands to block it. When his eyes adjusted, he saw his brother smiling sadly over at him from a chair, his arm in a cast.  
  
"I'll go grab the doctor," he whispered to Tyler. A pained look crossed his face as he looked at Tyler, almost as though he could feel whatever aches he was looking at. He had plenty of aches to give Ben, that was for sure. "You have. I gave you a concussion, Tyler. I'm sorry, I had to. I." He swallowed hard and seemed unable to finish.  
  
The confusion Tyler had been feeling was starting to amass, again, but at least the panic wasn't there. Finally, his mind seized on one thought that he could pluck from the swirling streams. "Where's Sandra?"  
  
Ben sat back in his chair. Apparently it was now his turn to examine the wrinkles of his shirt. His voice had no force to it as he said, "She's not here, Ty. She's not. She's not coming." He stopped, and looked up at Tyler. After a few empty moments, he continued, "She called you a freak. She said to make sure you heard that. That you heard she thinks you're a freak. Don't even fight it, 'Mano. If you don't know where a girl lives, she's not your girlfriend. And you certainly can't move in with h-."  
  
Tyler cut him off with an abrupt, staccato, demanding tone. "Why am I a freak, Ben?" Instead of answering, Ben started to stand up. "Don't you do this to me, damnit," he growled sourly. Ben turned his back and started to slink away, shoulders rounded. "Why am I a freak?" he shouted. "Come back here!"  
  
It was too late. He couldn't see his brother anymore. His girlfriend wasn't coming. He'd quit his job and left his apartment to move in with her. He was in the hospital, and he had no idea what was happening. He didn't even rightly know what hospital he was in.  
  
A different kind of fear started to form.  
  
"Merry Christmas, Tyler," he muttered to himself. He closed his eyes and waited for the doctor.  
  
* * *  
  
Tyler stepped out of the shower and looked at his face in the mirror again, and shook his head once more. The monster that stared back at him wasn't healthy in the least. Orange, red and green scales ran up his cheeks and towards his ears. His elongated upper and lower canines looked like they should have cut through his lips with his mouth closed. The claws that reached up to touch his face barely resembled anything human, with similar scales twisting the flesh and bone into talons that should never have seen creation anywhere but the stone gargoyles standing sentry atop tall buildings. The rest of his body remained untouched, but in his mind every morning, he heard the word echo that he never heard Sandra utter. "Freak." The pain came in knowing she was right.  
  
He wrapped a soft blue towel around himself for modesty's sake, and went back to the computer. His hand reached out to open her e-mail. Instead he hesitated. He felt white-hot rage flash in the back of his head. He lashed out.  
  
When the sparks finally cleared, he began muttering to himself, again. "I guess I get a new monitor, today." 


	2. Chapter 2

A slow smile finally traced its way across Chloe Sullivan's mouth as she leaned back in her chair with her eyes closed. Music was echoing from the inadequate speakers on her grape iMac. She always felt a little more in-control at her desk at The Torch. Things seemed to make more sense. The smile grew slightly as she thought about the irony of how many times she'd written articles of things that made no sense here. She relaxed back into her chair and resolved not to think of it, not to think about anything for a while.  
  
"What's up, Chloe? You never listen to music when you work on the paper," a familiar voice interrupted her thoughts.  
  
"Pete!" she replied energetically as her eyes flew open and she sat up in her chair. "I'm not working on it, exactly," she explained as she straightened the green sweater she was wearing, "I was taking a little break. What are you doing here? I thought we were going to work on your story tomorrow." Arranging a stack of folders on her desk, she felt as though she looked acceptably professional, again, and stopped fidgeting. She hated the thought of looking like an amateur in this room.  
  
With undue struggle, Pete managed to shirk his enormously overloaded backpack and deposit it on a disorganized, wooden desk with a loud thump. He grinned apologetically at his friend for the noise, and said, "Actually, I was looking for Clark. He was supposed to meet me down by the track and he never showed." He kept looking around the room as though he expected Clark to appear behind a filing cabinet or desk.  
  
Chloe's brow wrinkled in confusion, and she gasped, "Clark Kent? Reliable, prompt Clark Kent didn't show? Are you sure you had the time right?"  
  
Her show was met with a sardonically raised eyebrow. "If that's all the better you can do, you really need to work on your sarcasm," he said.  
  
"You're right," agreed Chloe. "I should have asked if you'd gotten Alicia Brody to go out with you, been accepted to Yale, or if you'd been elected governor of the State of Denial you're apparently living in. What are you doing with Clark, anyway?" She inwardly cursed herself, knowing that the tone in her voice had betrayed just how interested she was in what Clark might be up to without her. She attempted to keep her face impartial and thought, 'Not like Pete probably doesn't know. It's not as though he's blind and insensitive and obsessed with perfect little cheerleader bodies with perfect little cheerleader faces and . . .'  
  
Apparently her derailed train of thought wasn't as well hidden as she'd hoped, because Pete interrupted it by saying, "Are you alright? I was going to have Clark go check on a friend with me. I haven't heard anything from him in a while." He picked up his backpack, again, and looked as though he was about to say his goodbyes.  
  
"Wait," Chloe exclaimed as she stood up, "I'll go with you. It doesn't sound like anything you'd want to do alone, and it sounds like a mystery. Who knows what you might find?" The look on her face had changed to an excited one, her huge smile electrically charged.  
  
Her enthusiastic, hopeful smile, however, was met by an uneasy grimace from her friend. "Chloe," he awkwardly began. "I don't want this to turn into a Hardy Boys thing. I'm just worried about a friend, and I want to go see how he is."  
  
"Oh, I see," Chloe interrupted before he could say more. She could feel the color rise in her cheeks. It may have been from either embarrassment or anger, but she didn't want to think about which, right now. "You don't want me involved because I'm going to-What, I'm going to turn it into just another story? I'm your friend, Pete. Since when did everybody decide that all I am is a journalist?" As soon as she heard herself say the words, she knew that the warmth in her cheeks was from embarrassment. It was her own fault if people saw her as only a journalist. She tracked down every story with tenacious zeal, and often paid no mind to whatever consequences may have followed. She gulped hard and tried to keep a stern look on her face, but she was beginning to feel nauseated. Never did she imagine that one of her best friends would see her that way, or that maybe they'd be right to.  
  
The look on Pete's face was both sympathetic and worried. He apparently knew when it was time to walk on eggshells around her. "Look, Chloe. It's not that. It's that my friend . . ." he trailed of with a look of hopelessness. "My friend has some things in his life he'd rather not let people know about. It's not that I don't trust you - you know I'd trust you with my life. It's just that I don't want him . . ." He seemed unable to finish.  
  
"You don't want him to end up on the Wall of Weird, is that it?" she finished angrily. The nerve! First to say that he trusted her, and then to say . . .  
  
"Well, to be honest with you, yes," his words broke into her thoughts. He looked so pained and sorrowful. It broke Chloe's heart to see Pete like this. She knew that he'd suffer anything to be honest with her, and that it was probably torturing him to have to hurt her by saying that.  
  
She reached out her hands to grab him by the shoulders, and ducked into his sight since he'd started looking at the ground. "Hey. That won't happen." Her words were filled with considerably more compassion than they had been. "Let's go see this friend of yours, and we'll catch up with Clark later. I promise to leave my camera behind and my news hounding to a minimum. I'll just be your friend."  
  
It never stopped amazing Chloe how quickly Pete could whip out that grin of his for his friends, when he knew they needed it. "Alright, let's go," he said, as he shrugged the weight of his backpack onto his shoulders again, and led Chloe out of the Torch.  
  
  
  
The door to the low cupboard swung open to reveal several blue and green bags of powdered milk stacked on top of each other, gigantic aluminum canisters filled with who-knew-what, and more of the sealed gallons of water she'd seen in the last cupboard. The smell added age to cupboard. The whole house smelled old, somehow.  
  
Chloe put her fists to her hips as she straightened up, and asked, "Does this friend of yours know something about the apocalypse the rest of us don't?"  
  
As Pete crossed behind her to the next room, flashlight in hand, he let out one of his chuckles. "Did you see a store nearby?" he asked, flashing her another grin behind her head. "Besides, he doesn't get out much. The farthest I've ever seen him was still about a mile from the main road on one of his pre-dawn jogs. That's why I was surprised to see all the doors locked in the middle of the day." His hands gestured wildly as he talked, causing the light source to dance all over the house.  
  
"Speaking of which," Chloe started, her brow wrinkling in confusion and a touch of irritation, "how did we get in? Am I the only one who doesn't know how to pick deadbolts? And what's with all the 'pre-dawn' and the flashlights and the lights not having light bulbs? And the boards on the windows? What is this guy, part vampire?" She noticed that her own hands seemed to be a little out of control, too, and quickly thrust them into her pockets. Maybe that'd keep her from looking senseless for a few more minutes.  
  
A shrug from Pete, along with his face scrunched into some kind of apology, met her questions as he turned towards her. "Look, Chloe. I told you. I can't answer any of your questions about Tyler. If you want to know why he does what he does, you'll have to ask him." He drew his hands together and Chloe supposed he was trying to plead.  
  
She walked past him into the hallway without looking at his face, muttering, "Right, if we ever find him," under her breath.  
  
"What was that?"  
  
Chloe allowed herself a slight grin before she turned to see him with that pathetically cute wrinkled brow of confusion on his face. "I said, 'Bright lights must blind him.' Why? What'd you think I said?"  
  
"That's exactly what I thought you said." The look on his face seemed both unconvinced and unimpressed, however.  
  
Turning around, she allowed herself another small smile for about half a second, before she lost all traces of humor. "Oh no, Pete. Look at this!" Her voice clearly reflected the shock and worry she felt.  
  
"Oh, man," her friend quietly exclaimed. He came to kneel beside her and examined the fallen monitor, shining the flashlight on its cracked glass surface. "This is bad. You think this means something happened to him?"  
  
Her arms folded across her stomach as she stared down at him, and she shook her head slowly. "It doesn't look good, Pete." She stepped around him to see if she could see anything else by the dim light in the room. Thin golden shafts streamed into the room from between the boards on the window and onto the desk.  
  
Instinctively, her hand reached out to touch the green streaks she saw illuminated in the sunlight. Whatever it was had dried already, but it flaked off easily onto her finger. "Do you have any idea what this stuff is?" She walked slowly towards Pete while holding her finger closer to her eye to examine it. With barely any light, though, it was hardly productive.  
  
Pete had barely shown the flashlight on her finger before swinging it back to the monitor. "I don't know, but there's more of it on the screen, here."  
  
Chloe took a quick, mental inventory of her emotions as Pete's small light illumined the same dried green substance on the broken screen. A sour tickle clutched inside her lungs, and she couldn't figure out where it was coming from. She wasn't nervous, she wasn't scared, and she didn't even care all that much about this friend of Pete's.  
  
She couldn't concentrate on what she was feeling, though. It was like there was nothing but a lump of cotton where her heart was, that kept absorbing whatever tactic she tried to prod it with. Instead, she decided to set her mind to the facts around her. The sourness retreated and she felt better attacking something she knew had an answer.  
  
Pete's friend was missing. If he said that his friend didn't take trips to the corner market, who was she to disagree? Especially with all those cans of lima beans stowed over the fridge. If she were the neurotic shut-in apparently awaiting the end of the world, those would be can after can of coffee beans, and precious little else. Maybe some canned Big Macs. Besides, if the world ended and she were desperate for food, she could always invade the Kent farm. She was certain they would practice food storage. Somehow, she got the feeling that there was enough in their storm cellar to save an entire civilization from the brink of extinction.  
  
What was she thinking about again? Right, facts. There had been some kind of violence here. She didn't know what the green stuff was, but she was certain it wasn't good. Not on a broken monitor like that. But why just a monitor? Nobody kicked doors down these days? Maybe she really was the only one who didn't know how to pick a deadbolt. Where were the scattered papers, the upended chairs, or the cushions strewn about that years of Matlock and Perry Mason had taught her were hallmarks of this sort of thing?  
  
The scattered papers, maybe, she could explain. A man who doesn't get out much probably doesn't spend a lot of time at the post office. Personal letters, shopping, bills, and even junk mail probably only came to this man online. Well, not the junk mail. That'd be too much to ask for, she supposed. But for the rest, she couldn't imagine Tyler needing anything but his computer. Which, until very recently, was hooked up to that brutalized monitor. His computer, which . . . was still turned on?  
  
The green LED gazed steadily at her, while a nearby yellow one winked at her occasionally. "Hey, I've got an idea," she stated, straightening up and pulling her friend with her by his shirt. Her finger pointed to the computer humming happily in the corner, and she suggested, "Why don't we go grab another monitor, and see what had somebody worked up enough to smash a monitor, while leaving the rest of the house alone?"  
  
Pete gave an excited, "Ha!" and clapped his hands together once. "It's always good to see Chloe Sullivan work her magic. Clark's house is the closest; let's see if he's there."  
  
Chloe smiled at the compliment, not knowing exactly what he may have meant by it, but flattered just the same. "I thought you didn't want me to get all Nancy Drew on you. What's with that little cheer of yours?"  
  
"That was before. You know, when life wasn't at risk." Pete's voice sounded light and joking. Despite his words, he was obviously relieved to have a plan of action. "Besides, Nancy Drew? I think you're more Mary Tyler Moore meets Ace Ventura."  
  
Her face took on all the characteristics of mock shock. "Did you just compare me to Jim Carrey, Tenspeed? Hey, wait. Was that Mary Tyler Moore thing a crack at my sweater?"  
  
"Tenspeed? What does that even mean?"  
  
"You did pick the deadbolt . . ."  
  
She led him out of the house with the smile fading to a satisfied grin. In no time, they'd find this Tyler . . . Tyler . . . Tyler what? Why didn't she know his last name?  
  
The sour feeling yanked again at her lungs.  
  
* * *  
  
Tyler opened his eyes to nothing. Black, emptiness, nothing. He was used to living in the dark, so for him not to make out any shapes at all would have been worrisome, if he could only think clearly enough to be worried.  
  
A dull roar enveloped him. Not a roar, a hum. Here and there, he heard creaking metal. He figured he was in a car. Yes. There were the bumps, and the vibrations of the road.  
  
'I'm going to the hospital,' he thought, still thinking his way through the liquid concrete in his brain. 'Ben just hit me with a metal pole, and he's taking me to the hospital to tell me I'm a freak.'  
  
He relaxed, knowing he wouldn't have to worry until after he'd gotten the bad news. Which he hadn't gotten yet.  
  
If his face had been visible, it would have been the very study of confusion. Slowly, he reasoned out that if he hadn't been called a freak, yet, then he wouldn't know he was going to be called a freak. That meant being called a freak was in the past. And that meant he wasn't going to the hospital.  
  
It did not, however, explain the pain in his head, or where he was going, or why he was someplace dark, and in a car, and going somewhere he didn't know about.  
  
The confusion was getting worse. He closed his eyes and tried to keep his train of thought, but the gravel wall around it kept sliding around and on top of it. He didn't know what he was thinking about, or why.  
  
Where was he, again? Darkness.  
  
He had to think! He needed to wrap his claws around one thought and hold onto it, to keep sane, to keep his focus.  
  
Ben! Ben would help him. That was his one thought. He could just wait. He could close his eyes and wait, and when whatever this was had finished, he could go to his little brother.  
  
He was the only one Tyler could turn to. The only one who would keep him safe. Ben was the only person he could rely on when his world didn't make sense, as it hadn't made sense so many times before.  
  
Right then, his world made as little sense as it ever had. If he had noticed that sleep had replaced his confusion, he would have been grateful indeed.  
  
* * *  
  
"Shoes!"  
  
The single, clear word rang out through the house. It was actually a few moments before Martha Kent had realized that it was her own voice that had shouted so loudly. Honestly, did they think she couldn't hear the mud squelching around on her just-cleaned kitchen floor? She swore, if raising two farm-boys hadn't turned into the most amazingly rewarding life she could have hoped for, it would have driven her absolutely mad.  
  
"Sorry, mom!" came her son's reply, just as loud as her admonishment had been. She closed her eyes in exasperation and wondered why she bothered. The two men in her life seemed certain that being raised in a barn gave them license to behave like it. She and Clark were both in kitchen. Shouting was barbaric.  
  
She shook her head, the bright, red pony-tail she had her hair tied in swinging behind her. She continued spreading her off-white mixture onto the parchment paper as she talked over her shoulder. "Wash up for supper. I forgot how long this takes to bake, so dessert's going to be a little late."  
  
No sooner had the words exited her mouth than her son's fingers entered her mixing bowl. "Mmm. It's good. What is it?"  
  
"Clark! Get your fingers out of there. They're not even clean," she yelped at him, trying to push his huge frame out of the way with her hips. "It's pavlova."  
  
Clark chuckled and moved towards the sink to wash his hands. "Pavlo-what? How are you supposed to know how anything tastes, if I'm not here to help you?"  
  
"It's pavlova, and you love it. Now get out of my kitchen unless you can help in some kind of constructive way." She got another chuckle rather than shooing him out of the room. He was just lucky she was vulnerable to Kent charm. The pity was that most of it seemed to consist of being a smart-aleck with no decorum. Why couldn't she have been a pushover for well trimmed nails or a large vocabulary instead of 'Kent charm' and the limitless compassion that came with it?  
  
"Wow. I'm already drooling."  
  
"Is that why you're late?" she asked. "You've been hanging around Gabe Sullivan again and have a pocket full of puns to-Oh, no, Clark! Not your jacket again." She had turned to see the tattered remains of yet another jacket slung over a kitchen chair. There wasn't enough thread in all of Smallville to repair this one, either. She grabbed his arm out of the sink and started going over it for scrapes and bruises.  
  
"Are you alright? What happened?" Her eyes were twice their usual size and full of concern.  
  
Clark just laughed quietly and rolled his sleeves down as she tried to continue her inspection. "I'm fine, mom. If bullets bounce harmlessly off my chest, I think I can handle a simple green-faced monster." His words were light, but Martha thought he was hiding a good deal more worry than he was letting on.  
  
"I want you to be more careful. You never know where those meteor rocks are going to show up. And green faced monsters? What is going on, Clark?"  
  
Clark kissed his mother on the head, a gesture she guessed was meant to calm her, and he walked quickly out of the kitchen. "I'll tell you and dad all about it over supper. Just let me go tell him it's ready, and stop worrying so much about me. I'm fine." The look in his eyes told her that he needed to get it off his chest, so she just sighed to herself and tried to be patient until he was ready to talk about it.  
  
She opened the oven and put the pavlova in, setting the timer. As she started getting things ready to eat, she pulled the jacket off the chair and hugged it close to her chest. She used its sleeve to wipe at a tear that had slid from her eye. For the millionth time, she wished that she could protect her baby. 


	3. Chapter 3

The receptionist had just dropped an animal cracker into her mouth from her cache behind the printer on her desk. The phone, of course, chose that moment to chime in her earpiece.  
  
"Good morning. Sparrow Mountain Real Estate Group. How may I direct your call?" The greeting was automatic, even if the words were a little slurred by the crumbs in her mouth.  
  
Instead of her customary thank you and the efficient call transfer to one of the other eight phones in the small office, she knitted her face with a perplexed look. "This is Sandra Wells," she said in answer to the young man's query. She had received few phone calls at work in the four months since moving to Metropolis.  
  
The young man sounded relieved to have reached her, but somehow hesitant. "Ms. Wells. Hi. My name is Pete. Pete Ross. Look, I'm trying to track down a friend of mine here in Smallville. I was hoping you might be able to help me? His name is Tyler Reed."  
  
Sandra heard her own inadvertent gasp through the phone's earpiece. "What's happened to Tyler? Is he alright?" She knew it was a stupid question, considering the state he was in when she last saw him.  
  
The voice on the other end became slightly dejected. "Yeah. I haven't heard from him in about a week. I guess that means you haven't, either."  
  
She didn't think it was a question, but she answered anyway. "No. I'm sorry. I haven't heard from Tyler in months. How is he? Is he still . . . Does he still have the same problems?" She hoped that nobody was looking at her. She was trembling, now. She didn't want to think of it; she didn't want to think of him. Tense fingers toyed uneasily with her earpiece's coiled cord.  
  
A long pause met her questions. The wait seemed to make her blouse more irritating against her skin, and her shoulder blades twitched to alleviate the discomfort. Eventually, though, he started talking again. "I'm . . . I'm not sure I'm the right person to ask. That's kind of Tyler's thing to talk about, y'know?" She squeezed her eyelids closed, and tried not to think of his words as a rebuke.  
  
He seemed to try putting more optimism into his voice before he continued. "Look, I'm sure he's fine. Just in case, why don't I give you my number if you hear anything from him."  
  
As she was writing down the phone number, a stray thought occurred to her. "Pete, can I ask you something? What made you call me?"  
  
There was another pause, though more brief, before he answered. "I think . . . you may have been on his mind, just before he disappeared."  
  
"What do you mean?" she asked, the unsteadiness in her hands entering into her voice.  
  
"I took a friend over to his house. You know, to check things out. What we found . . . Well, it wasn't what we expected. His computer monitor was busted. I think there may have been blood on it." His voice didn't become more somber. He went through it like it was just a part of the story. "We hooked another one up to see what was on it before it got beat up." Sandra couldn't quite follow his logic. It sounded like he'd skipped over half the story, but she thought she was catching the gist of it. "And that's when we saw his e-mail. We figured he must have smashed it or something after he saw your letter. Either that, or he really hates spam mail, because that's all that was in there."  
  
The earpiece was nearly yanked off her ear as her hands gripping its cord pulled it taught. She could feel the color rising in her face, and she didn't feel like she was completely in control of her muscles. "My e- mail!" she gasped out. She'd tried to say it as quietly as she could, but it still rang like a shout in her ears. "You didn't read it, did you?" The prickling along her neck and shoulders told her that several pairs of eyes were on her. She didn't give herself time to care. She swallowed quickly, trying to gulp down fretting nerves that were clutching at her.  
  
"No! No, we wouldn't do anything like that," came his hasty reply. "To be honest, I don't think he did, either. I don't think any of his e-mails were open."  
  
Her right hand came quickly to her forehead as she lowered her head in relief. Heat throughout her body evaporated, as though from a breeze, and her suddenly clenched breathing returned to normal.  
  
After a few short moments of calming herself, she realized that it seemed to be her turn to talk, again.  
  
"I'm sorry," was what she managed to say. "I didn't mean to . . . I'm sure you understand? I'm sorry." She knew she sounded awkward and lame, but decided not to make it worse by clearing it up.  
  
"Hey, I'll call you back if I find out anything. I won't even tell Ty that I called, if you don't want me to."  
  
"Thank you," she said quietly. She disconnected the call without saying goodbye. She just needed to get away from her desk.  
  
Looking down, she saw that two calls had been on hold. With a handful of coworkers watching her, she dropped her earpiece to the desk, her fingers seeming to be without the strength to place it. She unsteadily rose to her feet, and made her way towards the building's elevators; not a single move carried any conviction.  
  
She made no excuse as she left, not even looking anybody in the eye. But her purse still sat on the edge of her desk. Nobody in the office seemed that concerned.  
  
* * *  
  
The wood creaked uncomfortably beneath her as Martha climbed the stairs towards Clark's loft. She really didn't feel like she needed the barn commenting on her weight like that.  
  
Her son was standing where he always stood, staring into the burnt hues of the evening's sky. For a moment, she just watched him, motionless. She wondered yet again what captivated him, what made him stare at the sky, sometimes for hours a night.  
  
One reason, she knew, was that he'd had a home up there. Somewhere. And maybe he still did. A home without her and Jonathan. It was nothing new for her to think about. She'd faced that question for more than a dozen years, now.  
  
Whatever his heritage, whatever his genetic or cultural birthright, Martha knew who Clark was. He was her boy, and spaceships and meteor rocks couldn't change that. She used to fear his birth parents, assuming he had any. She didn't fear what they might be able to do, just that they existed at all; they had a claim to her son. She had grown to realize, though, that whatever happened, she and Jonathan were his parents. That was enough for her.  
  
He hadn't known about his origin for even a year, though. She wondered what had drawn him to the skies for so many years before.  
  
She continued to watch him, and he continued to watch the sky. Neither one was in a hurry to move.  
  
It was easy to be proud of him. His strength, his strange new powers, and his gifts didn't add at all to that pride. In fact, Martha suspected that her husband was secretly ashamed of their son's gifts. He was certainly scared, a great deal more than he'd ever let Clark see.  
  
It was who Clark had become in spite of his differences that justified every sleepless night she'd ever spent, wishing for a child who could share what she and Jonathan had to offer. Clark had all of his father's idealism. It was idealism she didn't think existed growing up, a world as foreign to her as surely Clark's own must be. He also had most of her practicality, always trying to make sense of chaos, to use logic where less clear heads would find disaster. He lacked it only in affairs of the heart, and she desperately hoped the boy would learn to use sense there, too.  
  
Between the idealism and the practicality, Clark had found his own identity. He was never satisfied with a bad situation. He could see the way that things should be, and he set about trying to make them that way. Though there was still the occasional time when he needed prodding, his belief in his own ability to change the world around him was acute. And who could blame him?  
  
She liked to think she could see Clark for who he was. He would bring injustices to people's attention, he would fight any worthy battle regardless of the odds, and he would fight with the power of words before ever raising a fist. Even without his special gifts, Clark Kent would have been a force to be reckoned with.  
  
Once, her husband had told her that Clark had called Jonathan and herself his two strongest gifts. She liked to believe he was right. She hoped that Clark believed it.  
  
How could she not be proud?  
  
"You know what the worst part of a hayloft is?" Clark suddenly asked without turning around. "There aren't any doors to knock on."  
  
She caught herself smiling, and tried out a falsely stern face. Of course, he couldn't benefit from it since he still wasn't facing her. "Don't you forget who pays the bills around here. Or who lets them pile up."  
  
The grin on his face as he turned around was twisted wryly. She got the impression he didn't think financial straits were a good source of humor. Frankly, neither did she. It had just slipped out, as many of her quips did.  
  
"So what's up, mom? Did you find out about the juice stain on the carpet?"  
  
"Yes. When you were seven. You weren't exactly subtle about hiding it, but covering it with the washing machine was certainly impressive."  
  
For all the world, Clark's wide eyes, spread hands, and pitched voice made him look like he was trying to convince her of his earnestness. "I never in my life saw you and dad look under the washer. I thought I was pretty safe."  
  
Martha let out a sigh and shook her head slightly. Something about farm- boys or nonsense or maybe even teenagers' wit may have been muttered under her breath.  
  
Clark's expression clearly indicated how pleased with himself he was when it broke into a huge, toothy grin. "So if you're not here to yell at me about an eight year old stain, what brings you up here?"  
  
She crossed the floor slowly and sat down on the ancient couch wrapped in blankets. "I'm worried about you, Clark. You really seemed like you wanted to talk about things last night, and then your friends showed up and I didn't hear another thing about it." She pursed her lips to wait for a response, but it didn't come. "What happened yesterday?"  
  
Clark sighed and fell into an ugly red armchair. "Nothing happened, mom. Nothing that doesn't happen every week of my life, these days. It's really not that big of a deal." He was staring at the planks in the floor, not seeming at all comfortable.  
  
"So then what did happen?"  
  
He met her eyes and held them. "I scared myself."  
  
Martha kept looking at him expectantly, waiting for him to continue. When he didn't, she asked, "What do you expect me to say, Clark? 'Your gifts are a part of you but they don't define you'? 'You should only really be scared when you stop caring'? Or maybe, 'Fighting your own fear is always the toughest challenge'?"  
  
He rolled his eyes at her in perfect imitation of a North American Teenager. She hoped he'd perfect his impression of a Grown Adult, soon. "Isn't that what I normally get when I bring my fears to you guys?" he asked her.  
  
"No, it isn't." She leaned forward and tilted her head slightly to the side. "That's your father talking. We don't talk like that, he does."  
  
Clark blew out a huff of laughter. "In that case, you forgot, 'The cows aren't going to scare themselves."  
  
Martha's mouth, which had been in a pout of concern, grinned back at her son. "Exactly."  
  
"And, 'With great power comes great responsibility.' Where's that one?"  
  
She almost giggled, and said, "Somehow, I don't think that's his style."  
  
Her smile faded a touch, though the color in her cheeks remained. She tried to steer back to the other day. "How did you scare yourself, Clark? What happened?"  
  
"It wasn't anything big or important," he began. "It just bothered me."  
  
His gaze slid from her to the ground as he continued. "I was at Lex's. Or on my way there, anyway. A truck was pulled off the road, and I went to see if there was somebody in need of help."  
  
Martha tried not to smile at that, not wanting to interrupt the flow of the story.  
  
"I saw somebody inside, watching the place through binoculars." He shook his head sadly, still staring at the floor. "Things kind of went crazy from there."  
  
Concern briefly flashed across her face, and when he paused, she said, "Tell me what things went crazy. What scared you, exactly?"  
  
"That's just it," he said. "I got so angry, I still can't remember exactly what happened."  
  
He stood up, then, and paced along the floor of the loft. His footsteps echoed so loudly that Martha thought she could feel them through the couch beneath her.  
  
"I remember how angry I got that somebody was spying on one of my friends. I know that he tried to run me over, but I don't remember if he hit me, or I fell under it, or what. I don't even know for certain how my jacket got ripped." As he continued recounting the story, his fingers ticking off the points he could and couldn't remember, he didn't look over at his mother once.  
  
"Then I ripped off the truck's door, and I had him in my hands. For some reason, mom, seeing him just made me more mad." The memory had apparently renewed some of his ire, as his fists clenched silently, and his breathing increased.  
  
She tried to stop the anger's progression by getting him to concentrate. "What was it about seeing him that upset you?" Seeing him like this, she was more than just concerned. She had to admit that she was a little scared of him, too.  
  
"His face!" Clark spat. "His body was covered in scales, green near his head, red at his hands. I didn't know what he was."  
  
Martha's jaw dropped and her eyes grew wide. She was genuinely shocked at his answer. "Clark Kent! You were raised better than judging somebody like that, and you know it!"  
  
"I know, mom," he replied quickly. "I don't know what happened, or why. It's just that . . . I've seen so many strange things this last year. So many people with their own gifts, or just somehow twisted by the meteor rocks. Out of dozens of them, I can only think of three people who didn't try to hurt people: Ryan, Kyle Tippet, and Cassandra. So when I saw him . . ." he seemed unable to finish.  
  
She stood quietly and walked over to her son. She put her hand on his shoulder, and stared into his eyes, her own filled with compassion. "You're forgetting one person: You."  
  
Clark dropped his eyes, unable to hold her look. The color that rose in his cheeks told her how ashamed he was. "I don't know. That's the problem. How do I know that the same thing isn't going to happen to me?"  
  
He turned around, and went to stand again at the spot from which he watched the heavens. When he talked again, it seemed mostly to himself. "Look at what the meteorites brought this town. Thirteen years of death, pain, and terror."  
  
She was about to interrupt him, but he didn't give her a chance. "Chloe has a bulletin board in the Torch office that takes up an entire wall. It's hundreds of extraordinary and unexplainable articles of the strange things that have happened in Smallville since the day you and dad found me. And almost every piece on that wall is something bad."  
  
"What sorts of bad things?"  
  
"Bad things. I don't know." He ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath before continuing. "Lana's parents, Coach Arnold, Eric Summers . . . Chloe's entire high school dating career. And I can't talk to dad about it. All he ever wants to do is find a way to blame Lex and his father for it."  
  
He faced her again, but could only stare at her shoes. "Mom, I know that I wasn't responsible for everything that happened that day, or everything that's happened since. Everything else to come out of it, though, has been so bad, how can I assume that I'm any different?"  
  
For a short while, she just stared at her son, trying to think of anything to say. Everything that occurred to her, however, sounded trite and empty, and was something he most certainly knew, anyway.  
  
Eventually, she decided to say nothing. She walked to Clark and put her arms around him, holding him tightly. After a few moments, she felt his arms embrace her, as well. She was content to just hold her boy for a minute or two, hoping that he needed it half as much as she did.  
  
Finally, she loosened her arms, and leaned back to look up at him. "You know, Clark, you've been saving people since the first day you got here. I should know; I was the first person you saved."  
  
He smiled down at her as she turned to leave. "Don't stay up here too long," she called over her shoulder. "I'll start to think you're moping."  
  
* * *  
  
He finally thought he was lucid. Just the fact that he could think of that phrase confirmed that it was probably true.  
  
The first thing Tyler wanted to know was where he was, followed closely on the heels by why.  
  
He assumed he was still in the car, because he could hear the sounds of a highway, though it seemed at a distance. If he was, however, the vehicle was stopped. No purr of an engine rumbled beneath him.  
  
His hands were handcuffed behind him, and his ankles seemed similarly restrained. He was on his back, and his position was so awkward that he couldn't even move around to feel how large of a space he was in. From the way his breath echoed in his ears, however, he decided it must have been about the size and shape of an unlined coffin. Rather than intimidating him, the thought would have made him laugh, if he weren't scared of whatever might be waiting outside the box.  
  
Small rivulets of sweat were streaming from his head, neck, torso and thighs. He was grateful that he wasn't upright, where the sweat might drip into his eyes, driving him wild. Ever since he changed, his eyes were particularly sensitive, and even something simple like sweat could incapacitate him completely.  
  
The sweat was, however, gathering at his sides, and sliding around to his back. The itching from that alone was a silent torture. As he waited in silence for long minutes, that torture only increased.  
  
Desperately, he tried to remember how he had gotten here, but he couldn't. His body felt bruised and broken. He knew he'd been in a scrap, but he could not remember a single detail from when or where it may have happened. He supposed it had something to do with shock, and hoped it would come back to him quickly.  
  
Finally, he heard a nearby noise. A car door slammed, followed a few seconds later by another. Both were about the same distance away above his head. Then another opened and closed by his feet. This one shook him, so he assumed he'd been right about being in a car, and somebody had either just entered or just left it.  
  
"I'm a very busy man," a voice said coolly. It came from near the first car, and did not appear to be approaching. "Couldn't this at least have waited until the weekend?" Tyler balked at this. He'd thought today was Saturday, and wanted to know what day it was, as well as where he'd been. "Just because I pay you to perform a certain service for me does not give you license . . ."  
  
The talker was cut off by a second voice, this one right beside him. "I wouldn't have called you down here if it wasn't important. I appreciate your essential nature to the order of the world, but can we please get this done without the lecture?"  
  
There was a temporary gap in the conversation, and Tyler couldn't imagine what looks may have filled it. "What I appreciate, Mr. Wylie, is not being interrupted." It was the first speaker, again, and if his voice had been cool before, it could freeze entire suns, now. "You have exactly one minute to explain why I'm here before you're out of a job. And when I fire people in your line of work, they don't exactly get a severance package. You'll be in the same trouble you were in when I found you."  
  
"You pay me to deliver goods that don't want to be delivered," Mr. Wylie began. "Generally, these goods are people."  
  
Tyler could hear gravel crunching beneath feet before the first voice replied. "You're telling me what I already know. You're also very good at your job. I'd hate to have to lose you because you can't come to the point." There was more crunching, the owner of the other voice apparently approaching.  
  
Mr. Wylie didn't sound concerned. He sounded, in fact, a little cocky. "You also know that there was a fight outside your home yesterday, Mr. Luthor."  
  
For a moment, Tyler thought he may have been talking to Lionel Luthor, himself, as ridiculous as it seemed. Then he remembered a story about Lex Luthor moving to Smallville a few months before Tyler had gone into hiding. It made more sense, he assumed, but was still no less ridiculous, especially given the nature of the conversation.  
  
"Further, you know that the fight involved a friend of yours, and somebody wearing a green mask," Mr. Wylie continued.  
  
The voice that Tyler guessed belonged to Lex Luthor became one of both surprise and suspicion. "How do you know that? I don't like people making themselves familiar with my business, Mr. Wylie."  
  
The same cocky attitude was still present when Mr. Wylie replied. "But it's my business to do your hunting for you. I didn't like that you gave the job to your own incompetent security." If he was indeed talking to Lionel or Lex Luthor, Tyler couldn't imagine anybody talking to them with as much contempt as this Mr. Wylie was.  
  
Unfortunately, the conversation started to make sense to him at about that point. There was a fight outside this man's house, and one of his friends had been involved. The Luthor guy had sent his security to track down the man in the green mask. Mr. Wylie had set about his own manhunt . . . but instead of coming up with a man in a green mask, he'd come up with Tyler. He knew what was coming next.  
  
"You have five seconds, Wylie, before your life has absolutely no value."  
  
The clank of a tailgate dropping proceeded Tyler's box sliding towards the direction of Mr. Luthor. He tried not to make any sound, but failed when the box was dropped to the ground, and his head was driven into the wall of the box.  
  
He heard several latches being undone, and then he screamed as bright lights pierced his eyes. Out of reflex, his hands struggled against the handcuffs so he could cover his face.  
  
Eventually, though, his eyes adjusted for him to see. The light wasn't so bad, as it was dusk, and he was apparently under a freeway overpass. As soon as he registered that fact, however, he realized he was looking into the bald visage of Lex Luthor.  
  
"Congratulations, Mr. Wylie," Lex said. "Very few people ever manage to impress me."  
  
Lex kept staring down at Tyler, but hadn't acknowledged his presence. "Close the box and take him to the factory. We'll talk more there." Lex looked back to Wylie, and Tyler, too scared to move, much less talk, followed his look.  
  
Half a year ago, Tyler's life had changed in the space of a few hours.  
  
In the space of just one look, his life was destroyed.  
  
"BEN!?" 


End file.
